


Pitch In

by MintChocolateLeaves



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Cats, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 06:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17934209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintChocolateLeaves/pseuds/MintChocolateLeaves
Summary: “My cat…” the ghost continues, “if they don’t find my body then who’ll feed my cat?”Lips pressed together, Klaus says nothing. It’s an issue, sure, but it’s not his issue. Nothing to do with him, and even if he could do something about it, he’s in rehab.-OR, during a stint at rehab, Klaus comes across a ghost who just wants to make sure his cat makes it to a shelter.





	Pitch In

**Author's Note:**

> In the past twenty-four hours, I binge watched this show twice, and then sat and wrote this oneshot. I think I need sleep, but who knows. Set pre-series since I wanted to play around with the idea of Klaus seeing ghosts during his stints in rehab. Nice.

“Oh my god, _shut up Ben.”_

Maybe it’s not the best thing to be muttering under his breath in the middle of his rehabs group session, but well, there’s only so many ways one can go about telling their dead brother’s ghost to be quiet long enough to let him think.

Although really, it’s not Ben that Klaus is annoyed at. It’s the other ghosts that are infiltrating his mind.

They’re loud and they’re grotesque and they’re quite frankly, the entire reason he has an innate hatred for rehabilitation centres. Every addict has their fair share of ghost stories, but Klaus knows he’s got them all beat.

“Sorry, what was that?” One of the counsellors, a man by Ray, with a receding hairline says, tearing his gaze from the poor guy speaking to focus onto him.

Klaus shrugs his shoulders, decides that he’s not going to start talking about Ben, not when the ghost is leaning over his shoulder, not when it’ll only to conversation about loss and his _fucking, fucked up family._

“Just jotting some memos down,” he says to himself, “a list for when I get out of here.”

“You’re planning that far ahead?” Ben asks, although his tone is doubtful. Good to know that someone has faith in him. _Not._ Fucking Ben and his self-righteousness. That prick.

Said with love, of course.

Ray placated, Klaus waits for the man to turn away before turning ever so slightly to make eye contact with his brother, biting out, “I have one thing on the list Ben, and that’s ending this sober phase I’ve been forced into.”

Ben shakes his head, leans back and sighs.

Klaus is not above himself to say that his sticks his tongue out at his brother – because he does.

* * *

The ghosts normally leave him alone when he’s with large groups of people, or when he’s not trapped in the dark, which is where Klaus tends to let his guard down. His defences aren’t needed when the living are around. It’s almost as if their heartbeats act as a deterrent of sorts.

The light also keeps them from prying into his head.

Since the living spend most of their time in the sunlight, it’s only logical that the ghosts get the darkness.

Or at least, that’s how Klaus has come to think of it. His powers aren’t really the easiest to research, especially since he doesn’t _want_ to research them. There’s only so many half-baked explanations he can come up with about his power when half-baked himself.

He’s practically given up on trying now.

No point in trying if he’s already the family disappointment.

Or perhaps maybe… Maybe Klaus does research his powers, in his own weird way. He looks into the ways to make the voices stop, to keep the ghosts from encroaching upon his mind and has come with three methods.

Light, people and probably his most favourite: _Drugs._

Well, any substance really. It works extremely well; Poisoning his body and his mind seems to poison whatever magic that’s at work inside him. Keeps the ghosts at bay.

Stuck in rehab though, without his best resource – or resources, because even he loves a little variety, got to try everything at least once, right? – means that he can only rely on the other two things and well…

They’re not nearly as efficient.

Sometimes they don’t really… work.

(Some part of Klaus’s mind says that if he can still see Ben while taking drugs then maybe the drugs and alcoholism doesn’t really help either, but that little voice in the back of his head sounds like _dear old dad_ and it can fuck right off.)

_“Klaus.”_

Like now.

_“Klauus.”_

The things just won’t leave him be. He feels horror rising up his throat, hitches his breath in an attempt to breathe and blinks away the separation between himself and the land of the dead.

Not real. It’s not real if he’s not there, he can tell himself that much. Even if it’s lying to himself, even if he doesn’t believe it. Klaus just wants everything to be quiet, everything to be…

He blinks. Opens his eyes and aims his gaze up at bright lights, trying to blind himself. It doesn’t really work, and so he winces, letting out a sigh as a ghost leans over his bunk, trying to gain his attention.

Klaus’s gaze slide from the lights, to the ghost and back again.

This ghost isn’t like Ben. Ben has the decency to appear without the injuries he’d sustained at death. He’s clean, doesn’t leave Klaus anymore traumatised than he’d been when he’d first left the academy behind.

No, this ghost is bleeding. Externally, probably internally too, since Klaus can see through his chest down to his vertebrae. If the ghost won’t find a way to move on, then it’ll quite possibly be bleeding eternally too.

It’s death – ugh, well, _his_ death, he assumes – must have been so overwhelmingly painful that Klaus winces just thinking about it.

“Calm down Klaus,” Ben says, from the edge of his bed, and Klaus finds that the voice of his ever-annoying brother helps soothe him a bit. “Let’s just… see why he’s here.”

Klaus raises an eyebrow. He moves up a little bit, squints his eyes shut as he begins to phase through the ghost and then shuffles back a little bit. By the time he reopens his eyes, he’s far away enough from the ghost that he feels a little calmer.

No longer quite as claustrophobic as he’d felt seconds before. The hairs on the back of his neck can relax now, no longer having to stand on their ends.

“Okay…” Klaus mumbles, rubbing his arms up and down. He takes a breath, holds it in for a second and then continues: “…can I help you?”

The man lifts a hand up to his chest, at the blood dripping down his chest, at the vertebrae that are still slick with red. He says, “I’m – I’m dead?”

His lips twitch. “Uh – No… are you? I’d have never… known…”

Ben’s scowl seems to highlight that this is highly inappropriate, and not exactly something that a ghost would care to hear. Ben, as the resident ghost, has more experience in the feelings of the dead, so Klaus just takes his word and quietens, something that’s always difficult because words always have this way of clogging in his throat, begging for some sort of release.

“Okay,” he says, coughing, “so you’re dead. Happens to most of us, what do you want from _me?”_

The man averts his gaze, stares down at the floor. Nervous? Or anxious? Klaus isn’t exactly a fucking shrink, he doesn’t pretend to know what ghosts are feeling, unless they’re Ben and then it’s mostly _exasperation._

“They haven’t found my body yet,” the ghost says.

Klaus feels a shudder run down his spine.

“My cat…” the ghost continues, “if they don’t find my body then who’ll feed my cat?”

Lips pressed together, Klaus says nothing. It’s an issue, sure, but it’s not his issue. Nothing to do with him, and even if he could do something about it, he’s in _rehab,_ it’s not exactly possible for him to start talking about a murder without coming off as suspicious himself.

Also, what kind of person worries about their cat when they’ve essentially had their flesh gouged out? It’s…

Well, maybe that’s what normal, non-fucked up kids grow into. Adults capable of caring for something more than they care for themselves.

“Leave me alone,” Klaus says, and swings his arm up over his nose, blocking the ghost from his vision. “They’ll find your body before I get out of here.”

The ghost lingers, but it doesn’t remain long. It flickers away, thankfully not as persistent as he’d thought it would be.

Ben’s disapproval lingers a lot longer than that.

Klaus breathes out a sigh. He says, “shut up Ben. It’s just a stupid cat. They’re scavengers.”

* * *

He leaves rehab behind with a skip in his step and an overwhelming need to shut out the world again.

It’s always like this – like last time, when he’d been sent to rehab after a short stint in a holding cell, having thrown a rock through some asshole’s rear window – he’ll be admitted, improve by societies standards, decline by his own and then, when everyone is satisfied that he’s been fixed, they’ll let him fix himself.

Self-medication is always so very freeing.

Ben disappears for the first hit, as he usually does when it becomes clear that he’s not going to listen to his wishes to stay sober. With his eyes on the prize, coat billowing around him, he trudges through snow and down his favourite alleyway.

At the end, is his dealer. He trades cash for pills and it’s _amazing._

The first hit after a stint in rehab is always the best, the trickiest, the most dangerous, and Klaus loves it. He places a capsule against his tongue, leaves it to dissolve for a few seconds, before swallowing it down.

Poison has never tasted as good. Taking just one would be to disvalue how good it tastes – he swallows another for good measure.

“Alright,” he says, a laugh in his voice, “let’s go get fucked up.”

* * *

It’s after he wakes in another man’s bed, eyes adjusting to the white of snow outside his window that Klaus realises that wow, it’s winter – it’s pretty fucking cold out right now.

He doesn’t exactly have a place to stay. But oh well, Klaus has never had a place to stay, except for those three weeks when he’d been with… oh, what’s his name? He doesn’t remember, can’t really place the face either but he’d been fun. Real good at cooking too.

“Ah,” he says, and rolls over, ready to fall back to sleep.

Only to be greeted with Ben standing over the bed. He looks like he wants to be disappointed or disgusted by Klaus’s choice of partner – he’s not the most attractive, but with the number of drugs in his system, he’d been a lot better than now – but he doesn’t say anything.

Klaus shrugs his shoulders at him, mouths that it’s somewhere to sleep, and grins at the sigh of disappointment his brother gives him.

Then, he practically rolls out of bed, searches for his clothes in the mess of the bedroom. His lay of the night had been particularly eager, quite handsy and well, Klaus can never fault someone for eagerness.

Ah – there are his trousers.

“You know,” Klaus says, as he’s getting changed, “I kind of really want bacon right now. You like bacon, right Ben?”

Ben nods his head.

It’s not like he can exactly eat anything, but Klaus always makes sure to give him half of his own food. The same with when he pours coffee for the both of them or pulls out the chair that he knows Ben will sit so he doesn’t have to stand or phase through the table.

It’s the sentiment behind it.

He throws his coat on – swallows down another tablet – and then grabs a cigarette from his pocket. It’s not a joint, although he could kind of go for one right now… if only he had the ca-

Klaus’s gaze falls onto the wallet on the bedside table.

It’s black, sleek, not exactly bulging but with enough depth to it that Klaus is pretty sure it’s not completely empty. He tiptoes around the bed, grabs the wallet and opens it up.

“Klaus–”

“Shut your piehole Ben,” Klaus hisses, “What if you wake him up?”

From the way Ben blinks, expression shifting into something blank, it’s almost as if he’s unsure whether he needs to remind Klaus that he’s _dead_ and no one can see him.

Klaus knows.

He’s stumbled and walked right through Ben too many times to count. There’s no forgetting that.

“You can’t go around–”

“It’s fine,” Klaus sings, grabbing the notes and tossing the wallet back onto the bedside table. He leans forward, forces the cash into his pockets, before meeting Ben’s gaze. He says, “You gotta stop worrying, brother of mine.”

Ben clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

“Anyway,” Klaus says, “let’s get some bacon.”

* * *

Two cups of coffee later, one on Ben’s side of the table and the other in Klaus’s hands, Klaus stares outside of the window and finds himself thinking of just how cold it is, and how he wishes he had something warmer than trousers that are tied together by the seams with lace.

“We should make snow angels,” Klaus says, tapping a finger against his cheek. It’s not late enough in the day for a club to be open, and there aren’t any bars in immediate walking distance, so snow angels are probably the best option.

Even if it is fucking freezing.

“You’ll freeze,” Ben says, like the functional ghost that he is. Probably doesn’t even feel the cold, lucky bastard – although, fuck, no he’s not lucky, he’s _dead._

“I’ll be a Klaus popsicle,” Klaus says, finishing the rest of his drink. It helps him feel a little warmer, will help him remain warm for long enough to make said snow angels, he’s sure. “It’ll be great.”

Ben looks like he doesn’t agree, but well, it’s not his decision, Klaus has never really been good at following the orders of others. He likes taking his own direction on things.

Pushing up, he digs into his pocket, grabs a cigarette and props it in his mouth. It rests against his bottom lip, and with a small wave and a smile at the waitress, he leaves the diner behind, lighting the cigarette.

Wisps of smoke rise against the air, melded with the steam from his breath.

“Cold,” Klaus mutters to himself, and despite himself, he starts thinking of cats and dead bodies and a ghost that only cares about his pet and not his own body. “…Would it even survive in the cold like this?”

Ben doesn’t ask.

This is usually the part where Klaus explains it to him, explains his thought processes, but he doesn’t, simply inhales smoke and lets it sit in his lungs. He flicks away ash, keeps walking until the cigarette is finished, the ends burning his fingertips.

“They’ve probably already found it by now,” he continues. “And even if they haven’t, how the heck would I know where to find it? I don’t have a ghost address book to find cats now, do I?”

Ben blinks. He says, “Is this about that ghost?”

“Ugh, I’m trying to think,” Klaus says, “but how am I supposed to do that when you’re talking at me?”

“You’re going to help him?” Ben asks.

Klaus shakes his head, reaches for another cigarette and swears.

* * *

Klaus has no idea how to find people when they’re alive, least of all when they’re _dead._ And cats? They’re a lot easier to lose, especially in this fucking city. Even if he were sober, he wouldn’t be able to just turn on a tracker and find the dead body and the cat.

It’s impossible.

And Klaus knows it’s impossible. He’s not the kind of guy who knows how to track criminals or dead guys or cats. It’s not his… thing.

No, he knows how to track his dealers, and he knows how to disappear from people trying to pry into his life because of his status in the academy years ago. Klaus knows how to hide, and he knows how to get high and they’re the only two things he really cares about.

“You know, this cat better be fucking adorable,” Klaus mutters. “Oh wait, no, I hope it’s incredibly grumpy and scratches anyone who goes near it.”

He stumbles, takes a moment to balance himself.

“Just imagine the cat going completely crazy. You know, with how cats just stare into the distance, I reckon they see ghosts too. I must have been a cat in another life.”

Ben blinks, squints. “What?”

* * *

“You really have the brooding look down. It suits the leather.”

Klaus isn’t a stranger to leather. Leather pants look hot on him, he’s not too ashamed to admit that it makes him go from a nine to a ten. Self-flattery always helps the ego.

He doesn’t wear leather all that often though, and that’s probably because he doesn’t want to be walking around looking like his brother’s twin.

Diego turns and fixes Klaus with the same sour look that he used to wear when they were kids, whenever he caught Klaus sneaking out during the night from the academy.

It’s the type of look where one eyebrow arches up, where his lips tighten, and his eyes reflect a hardness that Klaus can’t imagine wearing. Life’s too _fun_ for the brooding act that Diego and his other siblings have all perfected.

Diego’s number one in that aspect though. Always the best brooder – he beats Luther in that aspect, Klaus supposes.

“Klaus,” Diego says, and after looking him up and down, “You’ll have to bother one of the others because I’m not going to lend you money to fuel that habit of yours.”

Klaus squints. “Good to know, I’m great by the way. Had the best bacon this morning, it was _scrumptious.”_

Diego arches his eyebrow even higher and adds to his look of disappointed, possibly older if only by a few hours, sibling. He says, “what do you want Klaus?”

“You’re on like, the boring side of the police, right? Police academy and all the shit?”

He adds hand gestures for emphasis, tries to keep Diego’s attention before it fades and the man decides that Klaus is just rambling again because he’s high and not because he has a _reason_ to be rambling.

“I know a few guys,” Diego says. Which is neither a confirmation or a declination. It’s something though. “Why? You’re not in trouble again are you?”

Oh Diego, what a caring brother when he’s not brooding. Trying to keep care of him, Klaus’s heart could shatter from how full it feels. He’s certainly got palpitations.

“Not in trouble, but begrudgingly brother of mine, I need your help.”

Diego doesn’t ask for the details as much as shift his foot in a vaguely threatening manner. To Klaus, it practically shouts, _‘tell me now, or I’m going home.’_

“I need your amazing police tracking skills because there’s a little kitten all by itself in the cold and my heart can’t _bear it.”_

Diego’s expression shutters from vaguely worried, through the realms of irritated and straight into anger. He shakes his head, pushes past Klaus, – possibly bruising his shoulder as he rams straight into him – and grits his teeth.

Jeez, Klaus just wants to find a cat, he doesn’t need the attitude.

“I’m going home,” Diego says. “Stop wasting my time.”

“Oh, come on,” Klaus says, “I need to find this cat. It’s going to die without your help.”

“ _Goodbye Klaus.”_

“Ugh,” Klaus groans, grabs another tablet from his pocket and swallows it down. Why does he even care about this cat? “You’re so cruel, all little snowball has is a murdered master and you’re going to leave him all alone?”

“Snowball?” Ben asks from beside him.

“The cat needs a name Ben,” Klaus hisses. “Don’t be so cruel.”

Diego stills. He turns and says, “What do you mean murdered master?”

“Well, Snowball’s dear old owner went and died so now he’s all alone. I can’t find the house though, so he’s all cold and I don’t know how much longer I can bear him being cold.”

“Klaus – Stop… Stop focusing on the fucking cat. How the fuck do you know someone’s been murdered?”

How else does Klaus know people are dead? He meets their fucking ghosts, that’s how.

Answering seems like a pain though, so instead, he lifts his arm up, points at the band he’d received as an inpatient during rehab, he’s still not cut it off yet, it’s an accessory for the time being, and says, “Sometimes I see dead people.”

“It’s about fucking time you–” Diego cuts himself off, shakes his head. “This dead guy, can’t he just lead you to the house and you deal with it yourself?”

Klaus blinks. He doesn’t think he looks particularly sober, but maybe he’s fooling Diego pretty well. He opens his mouth, as if to say that no, the ghost isn’t responding to his yells into the void, when his brother speaks for him.

“Of course, you can’t,” Diego says. He breathes a sigh, turns away, “alright, describe him to me, I’ll find the murder victim for you.”

“And snowball.”

“Yes, and the fucking cat.”

* * *

Klaus stops thinking about it at that point. He’s left it in someone else’s hands, the ghost isn’t around to bother him, and he’s found a cheap enough bar for enough drinks that he won’t even feel the cold if he passes out on the streets while looking for somewhere to sleep tonight.

He kind of forgets about the ghost really.

And the cat.

It slips his mind, as things so often do when all one is focusing on is the next hit and numbing the voices in his head. It’s not until his crappy phone buzzes, something that rarely ever happens these days, that he even remembers.

It’s from a number that he doesn’t have saved, should probably save, but won’t.

_‘We found the body. The cats at a shelter now.’_

Klaus blinks. For a moment he can’t read it, the letters are all jumbled and fused together, blurry. And then, he manages to focus, and it registers in his mind.

“Snowball!”

_‘Snowball!’_

He receives a response faster than he’d expected to. Or maybe his concept of time is skewed, maybe more time has passed but Klaus simply isn’t registering it. Ben’s not here right now, so he can’t exactly ask.

 _‘_ She _is actually called Coco, but sure.’_

Klaus grins down at his phone. He hopes that Diego got scratched to all hell by the vicious creature, because honestly, that would be _hilarious._

He imagines Ben will enjoy the image too.


End file.
